Forgemasters’ new challenge

Sheffield Forgemasters is pressing ahead with a bid to become the sole UK producer of heavy forgings and castings that can also be welded together to make components used at the heart of nuclear reactors.

The company hopes to gain crucial ASME NPT (Nuclear Partials) accreditation from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers early in the New Year after successfully passing a stringent audit to retain its existing quality certification for civil nuclear forgings and castings for the 20th year running.

Group quality director David Street said: “The programme to gain NPT status is a huge development with enhanced requirements and disciplines embracing all our processes, employees and sub- suppliers.

“This is to ensure we meet the exacting construction requirements of the ASME code, which are some of the most stringent demands in modern engineering.

“We are about half way through the process and will have the new ASME programme ready for external audit by March 2013.”